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My husband and I currently live on Long Island and are considering a move to either Westchester County, NY, Putnam County, NY or Fairfield County, CT. I grew up in Bethel and then Brookfield (where my parents still live), so I am familiar with the area. We have a large family and some of our kids currently receive special ed services (one being in a self contained class and another being in an integrated class with a 1 to 1 aide, adaptive gym and therapies.
How are CT schools for special ed and related services? In your experiences, are there any particular school districts that really stand out as being great for kids with special needs?
Thanks in advance! We were supposed to be moving to a house this month that we were in contract on (here on LI), but it was wrecked by Hurricane Sandy, so we are now back to square one and researching all of our options that may bring us closer to my parents. Thanks!
Bumping this thread. Re:Bethel, Brookfield, New Fairfield...Do you know anything about classroom models/services offered? Do they have self contained classes, integrated classes, etc....?
We have enrolled our kids in Brookfield schools and so far our experience has been fantastic! They have integrated and self contained classes for preschool age on up, adaptive PE and offer great academic support and physical accomodations. We came from NY which is known for great programs, and we have had a better school experience in Brookfield than we did previously (even though this was our biggest concern about leaving NY). What a pleasant surprise.
Last edited by diydesign; 01-06-2013 at 05:48 PM..
Previous poster here. I should have never written that review within a couple of weeks of moving here to Brookfield. Brookfield special ed is HORRIBLE. They have no regard for the law or for the rights of their special Ed students. When I wrote the review above, my family and I were temporarily staying in my parents' home while we looked for a permanent home (we had lost our previous house from Hurricane Sandy) and we didn't know if we would be in Brookfield long term. Our experience with Brookfield schools started out positive...until be bought a home here and the district knew we were staying. Then everything changed. Special Ed services were quickly decreased or removed from my children's IEPs, the district started bullying my family...and suddenly laws no longer mattered. For more info, search for the Facebook group: Brookfield, CT R.I.S.E. for more info.
Previous poster here. I should have never written that review within a couple of weeks of moving here to Brookfield. Brookfield special ed is HORRIBLE. They have no regard for the law or for the rights of their special Ed students. When I wrote the review above, my family and I were temporarily staying in my parents' home while we looked for a permanent home (we had lost our previous house from Hurricane Sandy) and we didn't know if we would be in Brookfield long term. Our experience with Brookfield schools started out positive...until be bought a home here and the district knew we were staying. Then everything changed. Special Ed services were quickly decreased or removed from my children's IEPs, the district started bullying my family...and suddenly laws no longer mattered. For more info, search for the Facebook group: Brookfield, CT R.I.S.E. for more info.
Sorry to hear that, but glad you're doing something about it. Can you elaborate on how the district bullied your family? There are many people who post here looking for the best districts for special needs students, so I'm sure your experience will help them make a decision.
Wow, I'm very surprised to hear this! I always held Brookfield in high regard about education, including special ed. Hmm...
I've heard similar complaints about both Newtown and Redding special ed. In general, I think special needs students are largely ignored by the district. Not the individual teachers, but the districts as a whole. I can't speak from experience, but that's what it seems like.
Wow, I'm very surprised to hear this! I always held Brookfield in high regard about education, including special ed. Hmm...
Eh, I grew up there and, while the schools always scored high on standardized testing, I was never particularly impressed by the quality of teachers and education, and I did hear that the special ed programs weren't that great. Of course, it's been a little over 10 years since I was in that school system, so things might be different now - but I was never impressed, nor were my parents. This is also why I stress that test scores only tell part of the story.
I have heard positive things from parents about Wilton's special ed programs, and also Foran High School (which was preferred over Amity by the same people, ironically).
Our daughter has severe global apraxia, along with several other diagnoses. Brookfield did their own speech and language assessment on my daughter, and agreed with her diagnoses and the severity of her needs. And yet when we went to her IEP (PPT) meeting, they cut her speech services in half without any kind of justification for doing so, only that the special ed classroom they were placing her in would accommodate her needs. To make a long story short, in this program our daughter was not learning. She was actually declining. We brought our concerns up at the next PPT and the district agreed to pay to have outside evaluators specializing in her diagnoses evaluate her, in order to provide the school district with suggestions. Well, the evaluators assessed my daughter and assessed the program that she was in. Both outside evaluators wrote that the program offered by the school district was a completely inappropriate placement for our daughter and was not addressing any of her special educational needs. Shortly after we and the school district received a copy of the evaluations, we received our invitation for our next PPT meeting and the district noted that their attorney would be there. When we asked them why their attorney would be there, the school district administration answered that he would simply be there to "answer any questions we may have." We felt very uneasy about entering into a meeting alone (just us as her parents, not accompanied by advocate or attorney) when the district with their large PPT team would have their whole team, all their special ed administrators and now their attorney there. So we consulted with an attorney who right away said what we already knew..... that it is not standard for a school district to bring their attorney to a PPT meeting when a parent does not have an attorney...and that this was an abuse of power on the district's part. We retained this attorney to come with us to the PPT meeting.
Needless to say, the second we walked into the meeting, it was clear that the district had an agenda..and I was so happy that we had an attorney. The district special education administration was confrontational. We walked in and they threw all of their progress reports, proposed goals, etc at my husband and I, along with procedural safeguards, IEP draft, etc. (They would never share any written reports, data etc before the PPT meeting, despite the fact that my husband and I had put in writing repeatedly our request that they provide us with this information in advance of the PPT so that we could come to the meeting prepared.)
The district also insisted on reading all of their progress reports REALLY slowly, word for word, despite our repeated requests that we first discuss the outside (independent) evaluations, to ensure that we did not run out of time. They repeatedly interrupted me and my husband, preventing us from speaking. And then when we asked again if we could discuss the independent evaluation reports, they said "Oops. We are out of time. We will have to discuss them next time."
At our next PPT meeting, we discussed the reports. The PPT team said they agreed with the findings in the evaluations. However, when it was time to establish our daughter's program, the district refused to take into account ANY of the evaluation findings, laughing at our concerns and smirking, while asking over and over, "What was her IQ again?" Indicating that- despite the fact that any child with such a severe expressive speech disorder would have a hard time scoring high on a verbal IQ test- our daughter had no potential and was not worth a special speech-intensive program.
All the while, our daughter continued to decline. Over an entire school year, she met NONE of her IEP goals. Not one. And yet, the district REFUSED to change her program. We were actually concerned for her safety as well (this is another long story.) So we felt that we had no choice but to unilaterally place her in an appropriate program out of district (despite the fact that it is the district's responsibility to provide her with an education.) Suddenly, she started learning. We put in our formal request that, if the district could not come up with an appropriate program for her, that they provide her with an appropriate out of district placement. They agreed to meet for a PPT meeting. However, when we showed up to the PPT, the district (this time with a different lawyer from the same firm), was absolutely vicious. We had our daughter evaluated by two additional speech and language pathologists specializing in apraxia (one of whom the districts LOVE because she is not known to be overly parent friendly)....and guess what? They both said our daughter needed a language based, speech intensive program in order to learn, and that the district's program and proposed IEP were not appropriate. At the PPT meeting, the district REFUSED to review EITHER of these speech therapists' reports OR her progress report from her out of district placement (that they were not providing) saying that they did not have enough time to review either of these reports. When we requested the use of a telephone so that we could invite either of these specialists into the PPT, the district REFUSED. Then they said that they wanted to report on their observation of our daughter at the out of district school a month prior (we had been present during the observation). When we asked them why we never received any report from them on this observation if they were going to be presenting data on the observation at the PPT- when we had repeatedly asked in writing for any reports to be shared with us ahead of the meeting- they answered that their plan was to report the data to us verbally at the meeting, from their memory, and that they had never written anything down so therefore there was no written report to be shared with us ahead of time. We told them that this seemed like a one way street....that they would not read reports on our daughter's current status, or read any of the speech evaluations done on our daughter....but that they would be sharing ONLY THEIR own one-sided reports that they didn't even share with us ahead of time and would not give us in writing. At this point, they said "we are done for today" and walked out of the PPT, in the middle of us talking, and left us there at the conference table. Two days later, we received a certified letter from them saying "Had you allowed us to continue with the PPT..." implying that it was US who ended the meeting, when the entire meeting was recorded on tape and it was THEM who left the room.
We had another PPT. Again, we put in writing ahead of time that we wanted the evaluating speech therapist to participate in the PPT via phone and that we needed access to a conference phone during the meeting (this is the therapist who knows our daughter's current status and measured her results against those at the time when she was attending Brookfield Public Schools). When we arrived for the PPT, the district administration stated that they called this therapist an hour earlier, "just to give her instructions on which extensions to dial to call directly into the conference room." We were very suspicious when over a half hour into the meeting, the therapist never called into the conference room. We kept speaking up about this, as did our attorney. Then we heard mention of her name from outside (in the main office) and asked "Do they have her on the phone?" They did. Then when the therapist was patched into the conference room line where we were, the first thing she mentioned was that she had been trying to call into the meeting for over FORTY MINUTES and the front office kept transferring her to voice mail and NOT to the conference room. The district was trying to sabotage her participation in the meeting.
At this same meeting, the district presented their written report on the observation they had done on our daughter at her out of district school (remember when at the previous PPT meeting they insisted numerous times that they had never written anything down on this and that there was no written report? Well now...2 months later this nonexistent report suddenly appeared at this PPT.) And it was a completely falsified, swayed document that was completely negative and highly critical of our daughter's out of district school.....and the report included mention of activities that never happened, responses from our daughter that never happened, their projections of how they felt the staff were responding to our daughter, etc. It was a completely MADE UP report. And when we asked for them to explain their data/ how they came to their conclusions, they stated that they didn't "remember exactly," that it was "just a sense that they got," etc, etc. They had zero data to present or to back up their claims.
After this PPT-- where the district again became confrontational, refusing to allow me to speak and made it clear they were not budging (they even refused to adjust any of their IEP goals, even though the goals were established 8 months prior, before any of her recent gains)----we wrote to the district, attempting to exercise our FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) rights, by asking for a copy of our daughter's speech therapy logs, including the number of hours that our daughter had received speech therapy during the previous two school years. In writing, the district refused, stating that they determined that they are not mandated to provide us (Her parents!) with this information, as this would be against federal records law--when it is in fact against the law for them to refuse to provide us with this information. There is a lot more to this story, but this above narrative gives the general gist.
They are also telling families that they will only hold PPT meetings at 10 am on Tuesdays...and if this time is not good for the parent, then they will hold the PPT without the parent. This is also against the rules, as they are supposed to make reasonable attempts to hold meetings at a mutually agreeable time. They have also been charging families for copies of their children's education records, despite the fact that parents have the right to one free copy of their child's educational file per year. They abuse their power and disregard the law all the time.
And I told the superintendent and the BOE what was happening and all the ways in which their special education administration is breaking the laws and denying special ed parents their rights. The BOE responded that they do not "involve themselves in individual student matters"...completely ignoring the whole "breaking of laws by their special ed administration" part of what we had written to them. And the superintendent's response (the new, interim superintendent) was that he understood we had concerns regarding procedural violations, so we should call the director of special ed to try to arrange a meeting with the special ed staff. So the superintendent was essentially blowing off our concerns and redirecting us back to the man who we told him was breaking the law and walking out of our PPT meetings. In his letter response, the superintendent also put it in writing that he was discouraging us from attending town BOE meetings.
Last edited by diydesign; 10-25-2014 at 08:05 PM..
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